Software projects/OS/Slackware/Advanced usage/NFS

NFS

• NFS is the most impressive *NIX networked file server. Accessing a file over the network is as fast as you've had it on your local drive.
• The standard configuration is pretty simple.
• If you plan to use it on a bloated network, use tcp connections instead of udp.
• By default, NFS protocol IS NOT ENCRYPTED. It was designed for LAN. There are methods to use it over internet but i won't describe them here. SSHFS may also be considered instead.

Server side

• Let's say the IP adress of the server is 10.0.0.250, and the IP of the client is 10.0.0.5 .
• I already secured the connections. To know how, just look /etc/hosts.deny .
• So you have to allow hosts or networks. Do do this, edit /etc/hosts.allow .
• Now you have to set up your exports. Edit /etc/exports . Be really careful here, because:

/home/lswat/videos 10.0.0.5(sync,ro) will work, but /home/lswat/videos 10.0.0.5 (sync,ro) will not work. See the space ?

• And finally activate and run the port mapper:

chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.rpc
/etc/rc.d/rc.rpc start

then the NFS server

chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.nfsd
/etc/rc.d/rc.nfsd start

• Those changes are now permanent, so the NFS server will work at next restart.

Client side

• Create a mount point, ie.:

mkdir -p /mnt/nfs/video-killed-the-radio-star

• And mount:

mount 10.0.0.250:/home/lswat/videos /mnt/nfs/video-killed-the-radio-star

You may have to specify the file system type:

mount -t nfs 10.0.0.250:/home/lswat/videos /mnt/nfs/video-killed-the-radio-star